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Interesting factoid on Occupy

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According to the new documents, the FBI began meeting with representatives of the New York Stock Exchange and other businesses as early as August 2011, a month before the Zuccotti Park protests.

Well now. That's interesting, isn't it?

I'm not clear on the timeline here -- another project... -- so I'm not sure what Adbusters (Canada) and the indignados and other parties in the US discussed publicly or online. And I suppose there is a ZOMG!!! Informers!!!!! Agent provocateurs!!!!!! story line to be had here. However, my takeaway is optimstic: The Stasi had a humongous heads-up, and all the money and all the resources that any organ of state security could possibly have, and yet a rag tag group of unarmed civilians -- true, only for a time -- out-strategized, out-organized, and out-maneuvered them. That really is a cause for celebration, I would think. NOTE Adding, since they know everything anyhow, the classic structure of the revolutionary cell may be obsolete. Just a thought.

Comments

That would explain how quickly Chase Plaza was blockaded by NYPD to prevent Occupy Wall Street from occupying the site they had originally chosen for their occupation. The monitoring throughout the summer obviously "tipped off" Bloomberg and NYPD ...

Interesting also, in retrospect, to note a comment Mayor Bloomberg made before Occupy arrived in New York City (and before any of us except the FBI, et al knew what was coming). On September 16, 2011, Mike expressed concern that the joblessness caused by the Recession might spark *riots* like those by the indignados (and he also referenced the Arab Spring protests). http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-collins/mayor-bloomberg-is-burned_b...

"We have a lot of kids graduating college, can't find jobs. That's what happened in Cairo," said the New York mayor during his weekly radio show on WOR. "That's what happened in Madrid. You don't want these kind of riots here."

His use of the word "riots" caused some concern. HIs mouth puppets at City Hall quickly issued lame spin:

The New York Post reported that after Bloomberg's remarks, unnamed mayoral aides called the mayor's choice of words a "euphemism." ("Riot" is only a euphemism when it's linked with "laugh.") The aides also pointed out that in 2009, when Bloomberg was fighting for renewal of legislation that gives him control of the city's schools, he predicted there would be "riots in the streets" if Albany didn't comply.

Then again, knowing what we know about the Mayor's advance knowledge of the Occupy Wall Street plan to occupy Wall Street, it would be irresponsible not to speculate that the autocratic Mayor had OWS's imminent arrival in mind when he used the inflammatory term "riot."

So Occupy (temporarily, I admit) outmaneuvered one of the country's most powerful billionaires -- and his private army, the NYPD -- despite having no money and only improvisatory organizational capacity.

I'm tellin' ya, this is a story of optimism!

First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi

very good point. In fact, one of the things that really impressed me were the specifics of how OWS outmaneuvered General Bloomberg and his Private Army -- through their super sophisticated use of social media combined with super sophisticated (and limber) tactical planning they figured out One Chase Plaza had been blocked and they hit Zuccotti almost without missing a beat (and of course they'd done their homework in advance re. public spaces accessible to the public, including for (what we once thought were constitutionally sanctioned) First Amendment activities.

Waldorf Astoria, New York City. November 8th and 9th, 2011. The Club de Madrid* held what was touted as a "very high level conference" on the subject: "Digital Technologies for 21st Century Democracy." (* Without having done any research on this organization, it does appear to be an organization dedicated to the "One World Government/Globalization" (aka "Global Kleptocracy") agenda.)

The roster of speakers included many former heads of state, and of course representatives of Microsoft and Google. One of the main sponsors: Rockefeller Foundation. And none other than Mayor Mike Bloomberg gave the welcoming and introductory remarks to the Conference. Day 2 looks to have been a Gala Love Fest honoring Bill Clinton.

Interestingly, in his remarks, the Mayor had nothing to say about how social media was -- as he spoke -- turning out to be a rather major instrument for social upheaval and democratic revolts *against* existing regimes (in Europe and Africa and *at that very moment*, his bailiwick, NYC.). (Well, to be fair, social media was turning out not to be the one-way street of easier government control and oppression, so his silence may have just been a reflection of befuddlement. I don't think the way AdBusters and OWS leveraged social media to carry out Occupy was what Mike B. has in mind when he hyperventilates about how much he *hearts* technology as a better means to run a government .)

So, while pretending that OWS wasn't in his City while he was making his remarks (or that he was actively smashing these peaceful democratic protesters and users of social media as an instrument of their impertinent "riots"), Mike did brag about how he used technology to create a centralized NYC.GOV website, and providing apps for people to report pot holes and such in real time to a new "311" service he created. (Oddly enough he also didn't mention the series of gigantic "signature IT projects" that he launched with great fanfare which not only failed functionally -- including the 911 "new and improved" 911 system which failed repeatedly during Sandy and the snowstorm 2 years ago -- but turned out, one after the other, to have been multi billion dollar money pits infested with embezzlement by crooked contractors and consultants. But hey, he couldn't talk about everything under the sun during opening remarks. Though he did manage to exhort the audience (twice) to shop a lot while they were in NYC because NYC really needed the sales tax revenues. (Only Mike thought this was funny, apparently.)

I don't have time to go into more detail about the details of the Club de Madrid program or the serious creepy factor around the whole event (leaving aside the eerie conicidence of this being held in the wake of Arab Spring and OWS's arrival in New York.) But here are links for anyone who is interested in learning more.

Here is the link to the website where all the speakers' presentations are recorded and can be heard via audio on the web. (A promise to provide transcripts in the future remains unfulfilled, though the dead icons referencing transcripts are there.) http://www.clubmadrid.org/2011conference/?page_id=2024

multimillion dollar IT clusterfucks and looting orgies? I haven't heard about them, and I do try to pay attention.

* * *

Lenin was wrong about "The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them"; the capitalists will make rope that is so shitty and corrupt that they can't hang anybody else, which they must do in order to keep on appropriating....

First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi

... unless viewed through the lens of Kleptocracy (pace Hugh), in which case they were wildly successful PPPs wherein corporate friends and cronies of Furer Mike received gajillionty billions of New York City tax payer funds (otherwise known as "other people's money") in exchange for a heap of inoperative junk disguised as "improvements" of major City systems (payroll, 911, Board of Ed "computerization", and so on.)

Apparently Assassination Tuesdays is not the only "forum" for Federal assassination of civilians. The ongoing mining of the FOIA'd documents re DHS/FBI plans for OWS reveals that FBI/DHS and "Fusion Groups" (?!) were fixing to assassinate "leaders" of Houston OWS (if they could be identified).

The leaderless-movement structure is far more intelligent than it is given credit for. At least in the current posture of the joined battle, with the anti-citizen phalanx visibly limited to functioning in the narrow structure of picking off leaders in order to destroy democratic movements.

if you read the citizen's (occupier's) complaint at the bottom of page 64, you'll find this forum thread referenced (i've altered the url a little so that it won't link directly to the website): http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_8_10/465172 Hippies_want_to_occupy_Daytona_Beach.html

iow, rightwing gun nuts are fantasizing, and possibly more than fantasizing, on the internets about killing protestors.

i pay attention to the cassandras and the canaries in the coal mines and the conspiracy theorists because sometimes they're right, but i'm a believer in checking the primary sources whenever you can.

"If the "fusion groups" are "rightwing gun nuts" ATF and DOJ must have started monitoring and making files about them."

?

too cryptic for me....

i read through a few hundred pages of those foia releases last night and it looks like there are [and will be] several hundred more. so far, i've found two separate gun-related threads/issues/problems -

1. some rightwing gun nuts, in open internet forums, talked about attacking protestors and occupiers. at least one protest group, and possibly more, reported this to law enforcement agencies, who may or may not have gone so far as to investigate the threats made by the gun nuts. i stopped reading at that point because it was late and i was tired.

2. a separate set of documents dealt with the fact that some anarchists and occupiers, in open internet forums, talked about when it was acceptable to shoot police officers. i was actually favorably impressed by how much emphasis the various agencies placed on protecting the protestors' civil rights, even in the face of the fact that these same protestors were openly talking about killing police officers.

well, i'd been [accidentally] following us day of rage since before its inception and i'd have said the banksters themselves could have found out what was going to happen if they'd been perusing the internets.

i've read through some of the collected foia documents http://www.justiceonline.org/our-work/ows-foia.html and a lot of the analysis done by dhs, police departments, etc was done from stuff they got directly off the web [websites, facebook pages, etc are listed].

The ability of Occupy to get off the ground is/was indicative of widespread public support. You could see that in the numbers of people donating food, supplies, money etc. Also, in the early days there was widespread public participation too. Which just goes to show you that even without clear goals and solid organization, there is a huge amount of public dissatisfaction with the system. How to channel and organize that is the real question.

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